downstairs, twisting her hair into a ponytail, Mrs Cabot had thawed. She had gotten Arnie a Pepsi-Cola and was listening raptly as he regaled her with tales of the chess club.
'It's the only civilized extra-curricular activity I've ever heard of,' she told Leigh, and smiled approvingly at Arnie.
'BORRRRR-ing,' Leigh trumpeted. She put an arm around Arnie's waist and smacked him loudly on the cheek.
'Leigh Cabot!'
'Sorry, Mums, but he looks cute in lipstick, doesn't he? Wait a minute, Arnie, I've got a Kleenex. Don't claw at it.' She dug in her purse for a tissue. Arnie looked at Mrs Cabot and rolled his eyes. Natalie Cabot put a hand to her mouth and giggled. The rapprochement between her and Arnie was complete.
Arnie and Leigh went to Baskin-Robbins, where an initial awkwardness, left over from the phone conversation of the night before, finally melted away. Arnie had had a vague fear that Christine would not run well, or that Leigh would find something nasty to say about her; she had never liked riding in his car. Both were needless worries. Christine ran like a fine Swiss watch, and the only things Leigh had to say about her rang of pleasure and amazement.
'I never would have believed it,' she said as they drove out of the ice-cream parlour's small parking lot and joined the flow of traffic beaded toward the Monroeville Mall. 'You must have worked like a dog.'
'It wasn't as bad as it probably looked to you,' Arnie said. 'Mind some music?'
'No, of course not.'
Arnie turned on the radio - The Silhouettes were kip-kipping and boom-booming through 'Get a Job.' Leigh made a face. 'DIL, yuck. Can I change it?'
'Be my guest.'
Leigh switched it to a Pittsburgh rock station and got Billy Joel. 'You may be right,' Billy admitted cheerfully, 'I may be crazy.' This was followed by Billy telling his girl Virginia that Catholic girls started much too late - it was the Block Party Weekend. Now, Arnie thought. Now she'll start to hitch . . . back off . . . something. But Christine only went rolling along.
The mall was thronged with hectic but mostly good-natured shoppers; the last frantic and sometimes ugly Christmas rush was better than two weeks off. The Yuletide spirit was still new enough to be novel, and it was possible to look at the tinsel strung through the wide mall hallways without feeling sour and Ebenezer Scroogey. The steady ringing of the Salvation Army Santas' bells had not yet become a guilty annoyance; they still chanted good tidings and good will rather than the monotonous, metallic chant of The poor have no Christmas the poor have no Christmas the poor have no Christmas that Arnie always seemed to hear as the day grew closer and both the shopgirls and the Salvation Army Santas grew more harried and hollow-eyed.
They held hands until the parcels grew too many for that, and then Arnie complained goodnaturedly about how she was turning him into her beast of burden. As they were going down to the lower level and B. Dalton, where Arnie wanted to look for a book on toy-making for Dennis Guilder's old man, Leigh noticed that it had begun to snow. They stood for a moment at the window of the glassed-in stairwell, looking out like children. Arnie took her hand and Leigh looked at him, smiling. He could smell her skin, clean and a bit soapy; he could smell the fragrance of her hair. He moved his head forward a bit; she moved hers a bit toward him. They kissed lightly and she squeezed his hand. Later, after the bookstore, they stood above the rink in the centre of the mall, watching the skaters as they dipped and pirouetted and swooped to the sound of Christmas carols.
It was a very good day right up until the moment that Leigh Cabot almost died.
She almost surely would have died, if not for the hitchhiker.
They had been on their way back then, and an early December twilight had long since turned to snowy dark. Christine, surefooted as usual, purred easily through the four inches of fresh light powder.
Arnie had made a reservation for an early dinner at the British Lion Steak House, Libertyville's only really good restaurant, but the time had gotten away from them and they had agreed on a quick to-go meal from the McDonald's on JFK Drive. Leigh had promised her mother she would be in by eight-thirty because the Cabots were having friends in"